Indiana University is committed to achieving a position of absolute leadership in the design, development and creative application of information technology. A key to this commitment is the University's extensive five-year Information Technology Strategic Plan. This Plan is regarded by many of IU's peer institutions as being one of the most thorough and comprehensive information technology strategic plans yet developed at an American University. The State of Indiana also views IT as a top priority and has also made a major commitment annually for the next two years of 2.75% of the base budgets of all the State universities to support the development of their information technology infrastructures. Indiana University's IT Strategic Plan is determining how the University is investing this funding. Further commitments to this goal are seen in the decision by IU to create its first new academic school in twenty-five years, the School of Informatics; and by IU's significant contributions to the development of national and international next-generation network architectures and software infrastructures, which are the foundation for pervasive computing technologies in the 21st century. IPCRES will leverage these developments by advancing a major new program in pervasive computing research that builds upon many of these developments and which are aligned with the national information technology research agenda.
Indiana University is a major participant in many of the national programs that are defining the software and network infrastructure for pervasive computing. In total, approximately $20 million in current funding comes from Federal sources to Indiana to support the projects described in this document. These funding sources include the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DoE), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Based on the fundamental strategy in this proposal to build a critical mass of talented researchers based in laboratories of world standing, it is estimated that funding for IPCRES requested from the Lilly Endowment will leverage additional federal support for IPCRES research by a factor of up to 4-to-1.
Indiana University already has a substantial role in the design of the software technologies that will enable the new pervasive computing technologies.
IU is part of the National Science Foundation's National Computational Science Alliance (NCSA), with IU research focused on distributed systems that underpin pervasive computing. IU is leading the effort to define the next generation of Internet "science portals" which provides a foundation for network-enabled problem solving environments for science and engineering applications. This work is based on IU's leadership in defining new approaches for software component technology that are appropriate for science and engineering applications.
IU will soon become the lead NCSA site for massive data storage research and demonstration activities. This activity is also being supported by a new partnership in research and development with IBM on data storage and high performance computing.
IU researchers also participate in a number of large DoE funded initiatives to study distributed systems "middleware" and application software of interest to the DoE National Laboratories. Called the Common Component Architecture (CCA) project, this activity will allow researchers to interactively compose sophisticated software applications from re-usable software modules that span the Internet. In a closely related project, IU is working with Sun Microsystems on the Java Grande project, a collaboration aimed at building software standards for the use of the Java language in scientific and engineering applications.
In addition, IU is participating in a major DoE effort to make remote scientific instruments usable as desktop appliances on a researcher's personal computer.
This program in remote instrumentation builds on current collaborations with Argonne National Labs and the DoE 2000 Common Component Architecture Forum, and addresses several issues related to Next Generation Internet (NGI) network-based instrumentation including high speed data collection, reduction, storage and visualization, and real-time instrument control for the acquisition of macromolecular x-ray crystallographic data from beamline sectors at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Advanced Light Source (ALS) and the Argonne National Laboratory Advanced Photon Source (APS).
Indiana University researchers are also working with NASA Ames Research Center in California and NCSA partners in Urbana and at Argonne National Labs on the "Information Power Grid" (IPG) to implement and test prototypes of the next generation of network services. IPG is the first large-scale, national effort to bring about the next level of Internet application capabilities. IPCRES will be a major participant in this development.
IU is one of the partner institutions in the new, NSF funded "Next Generation Software" project led by Ken Kennedy of Rice University and co-chair of President Clinton's Information Technology Advisory Committee. This group includes researchers from the University of Houston, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Tennessee, the University of Illinois, the University of Southern California and the University of Chicago. The goal of this project is to develop the software programming tools that allow application software to seamlessly execute on the national information power grid without direct programmer intervention.
IUPUI researchers participate in the NSF's Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 2 (DLI2) to develop intelligent software agent technology for information retrieval and filtering. IU has established a program of research that is aimed at designing and developing a distributed intelligent information distribution and filtering system that provides personalized information services to the user while minimizing direct user involvement. Such systems will weed out unwanted (irrelevant) incoming information and traverse the network to retrieve relevant information of interest to the user.
IUPUI researchers will soon commence a research effort with Microsoft for test assessment and minimization for the Windows NT operating system. This research will achieve an empirical assessment of the quality of the test of the NT operating system. NT is a very large and complex software system. Hence, the measurement of its control and data coverages, the identification of untested parts of its components, the improvement and the minimization of the test are of crucial importance to increase the reliability of the NT operating system.
IUPUI and IU researchers along with Technologie-Zentrum Informatik at the University of Bremen in Germany are designing and implementing a distributed agent-based system for information sharing. Funded in part by the NSF Digital Library initiative, this project aims at providing a comprehensive framework for inter-agent communication, negotiation, collaboration and maintaining history-sensitive images of the collaborators. In addition, the prototype will be used to investigate the suitability of the various distributed-object models to the domain of filtering and the possibility of using market-based economic models for agent cooperation.
Each of these collaborations corresponds to a significant and active link between IU and the national research community that is defining the software foundation for pervasive computing. WIDTH="612" COLS="5">
The pervasive computing applications of the next decades will depend upon more than new software infrastructures. The other key enabling technologies include the rapid evolution of semiconductor technology and the deployment of the advanced network infrastructure that is driving the convergence of computing and telecommunication. While IU does not have a significant program in advanced microprocessors, it has moved into a leadership role in advanced computer networks.
The current commercial Internet grew out of the original advanced computer network research project, then called ARPANET, which was funded by the government and developed by a collaboration of university and private research organizations. The World Wide Web has similar academic roots. It was developed by the European physics community to use the early research Internet as a means of exchanging scientific data. NCSA introduced the graphical Web browser and standard server software and the Web was born.
The advances in pervasive computing that depend upon communication technology will evolve from a continuation of this collaboration between the advanced scientific research community and the network/telecommunications industry. This is because advanced network-based applications to support science, research and education require network performance and services that currently cannot be provided by the commercial Internet. By building applications that push the edge of current capabilities, we will see the invention of the new technologies that will drive the development of the commercial pervasive computing infrastructure. As described in the PITAC report, the US has maintained its lead in information technology because of the support of basic research from public and private foundations.
Indiana University's role in the advanced, next generation Internet research activities takes place in the context of several key national research networks. Currently the high performance networks serving the US academic research community include the Internet2 Abilene network, which is the prototype for the next major advance in the commodity Internet, and the international high performance research and education network (HPREN) connections based at the Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) connection point in Chicago. One of the most significant of these connections is the TransPAC network, which provides advanced network connection and services from the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) to US and global networks.
The Internet2 Abilene network is a high performance research and education network developed by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) in partnership with Qwest Communications, Northern Telecom, Cisco Systems, and Indiana University. Abilene provides a backbone network for the Internet2 project, interconnecting regional network aggregation points called GigaPoPs via a 2.4Gbps IP packet-over-SONET infrastructure. The Abilene network goals are to provide an advanced high-availability backbone network to support the demands of the advanced research applications being developed by the UCAID members and to explore the frontiers of network research.
In August 1998 IU was chosen to operate the Abilene research and education network operations center (NOC). Located at IUPUI, the Abilene NOC provides comprehensive network management services for all physical and operational aspects of the Abilene network, ensuring the day-to-day functioning of the core nodes and the backbone network. The NOC is critical to the deployment of advanced networking initiatives and services being developed by the Internet2 community. IU is also a founding member of Internet2, and actively participates in the Internet2 research and development efforts of Quality of Service Backbone (QBone), the I2 Distributed Storage Initiative, the I2 Digital Video Initiative, Network Management Working Group and Routing Working Group.
Very strong support from the State of Indiana played a major part in IU's being chosen to run Abilene. As well as providing funding for the NOC, the State is providing funding to install a state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure between IUB, IUPUI, Purdue and the main connection point at Qwest in Indianapolis that houses one of the Abilene core backbone nodes. A further connection to NCSA is also being investigated. All of these connections will connect to the Indiana GigaPoP which is also funded by the State and which will be co-managed by IU and Purdue. The Indiana GigaPoP is an aggregation and exchange point for high-speed connections in Indiana which in turn connect to Qwest. Eli Lilly and Company is expected to soon connect to the Indiana GigaPoP, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division is also investigating connecting. This infrastructure will rival the best on either coast and will enable a wide range of new scientific opportunities.
The STAR TAP is an NSF-funded advanced, high performance network exchange point that provides for interconnection and interoperability of the HPRENs in the US and global research and education communities. IU is a member of the STAR TAP International Advisory and Technical Advisory Committees, and is actively engaged in policy, management and technical advisory for STAR TAP. IU provides network operation center services for the STAR TAP and for multiple international networks meeting at STAR TAP including TransPAC (Asia Pacific) and EuroLink (Europe).
In September 1998 the National Science Foundation awarded IU a $10-million grant, that, coupled with an annual $6 million from Japan's Science and Technology Agency (STA), enabled IU and the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) consortium to develop the TransPAC high-speed, international connection between the NSF's vBNS and the APAN networks. AT&T and Japan's Kokusai Denshin Denwa, Co., Ltd. (KDD) provide the main networking infrastructure for the connection. With its connection to the vBNS through the Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) in Chicago, TransPAC will provide IU and other vBNS-linked US institutions with high-bandwidth access to an unprecedented number of research and education institutions in the Asia Pacific. TransPAC supports collaborations in such disciplines as astronomy, molecular biology, high-energy physics, medicine, meteorology, visualization, computational science, and distance learning. TransPAC is expected to enable some $200 million of new research over a five-year period. IU is the US lead institution in an international consortium for the development, deployment and operations of the TransPAC network.
Much of the work directed toward TransPAC, Abilene, STAR TAP and Internet2 activities is directed to network infrastructure and services which are essential components of pervasive computing. Resource reservation, guaranteed quality of service, advanced network management tools, performance measurement and characterization, application tuning for high performance networks and multicast are some of the research and development areas. The primary goals of these networks are to provide a tool for enabling advanced science, research and educational collaboration and applications and to develop the network architectures, tools and technologies that will lead the advancement of the commercial Internet space.
Indiana University has also created partnerships and developed sound relationships with a number of international information technology businesses, and with Indiana's other leading research university, Purdue.
In March 1998 IU announced the Microsoft Enterprise License Agreement (MSELA), the first ever high-value licensing agreement of its kind. The four-year agreement provides all 100,000 IU students, faculty, and staff access to the latest versions of Microsoft's most popular software applications, including operating systems, desktop productivity tools, and infrastructure server and messaging products. So far over 100,000 copies of Microsoft software have been distributed throughout IU. The value of this software exceeds by over three times the total value of the full four-year MSELA. The benefits of the MSELA for the State of Indiana are enormous it means that nearly all IU students will graduate literate in the most recent version of Microsoft's software which is the most widely used in the world.
In September 1998 IU installed a significant upgrade to its IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer. Now IU's most powerful supercomputer, the SP is one of the most powerful in the region. The upgrade to the SP was funded in part by a Shared University Research (SUR) grant from IBM, with additional investment by Indiana University.
IU and Cisco Systems partnered in a new joint project to develop a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Practice Lab. Operational as of February 1999 and one of two such labs in the nation, the lab provides a testing environment for networking professionals worldwide who are candidates for certification as Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (the elite of internetworking industry certifications). The CCIE Practice Lab is a collaboration of the Department of Computer Technology in the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and University Information Technology Services.
In May 1999 IU announced a significant agreement with IBM to work together to upgrade IU's information technology infrastructure and collaborate on joint research projects. Central to this agreement is IU's massive data storage initiative. IU joins Los Alamos National Laboratory and other leading national laboratories, as well as an elite group of universities, in using High Performance Storage System (HPSS) and Distributed File System (DFS) software for data management. The HPSS software was developed by IBM and five US DoE laboratories. This software will enable IU to expand its storage system to provide extensive capacity for IU researchers who need to store and access huge amounts of data. IU will be one of the first educational sites in the world where student users can access such a vast data resource from their personal computers, using a Web-based interface being developed by IU.
3. The Opportunity: Pervasive Computing | Table of contents | 5. The Indiana Pervasive Computing Research Initiative
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